Comment by toraway
6 hours ago
I have no great love for Dario but his “talking shit” is literally making the point that what Altman is saying publicly is NOT actually in defense or praise of Anthropic and is a calculating, manipulative tactic.
Which is intended to muddy the waters about Anthropic’s actual position vs OpenAI’s, and portray himself as a conciliator (for the audience of DoD/Trump) who is still bound by equally strong ethics (as a fig leaf for OpenAI’s employees sympathetic to Anthropic). All to swoop in a land a big contract from the same people he is making a show of “supporting” in public.
I’d be pretty pissed too, tbh. Like, should he instead be thanking Sam effusively for being a manipulative slimeball acting entirely within his own self interest?
If as he says Sam’s comments are actually damaging Anthropic’s credibility/bargaining position with his public commentary then trying to change the popular narrative about what OpenAI/Sam are doing is a reasonable tactic.
As for your welfare analogy I’m kinda struggling to understand how to map that onto the participants in the current scenario or the lesson intended to be implied by it.
At least as it's presented in the article, there's no more reason to believe Amodei than there is Altman and Altman is presenting it in a less impassioned way which makes him more believable to anyone who doesn't have in-depth knowledge of the situation.
Going "what he's saying is straight up lies" is no more evidence backed than Altman claiming he asked the DoD to have Anthropic given the same deal as OAI and have the SCR designation avoided.
Altman was fired by his own board for lying to them. Just because Microsoft blackmailed them into reversing this decision by threatening financial ruin does not change that.
You don't give habitual liars the benefit of doubt.